The Toxicity of Fear: How Ignorance Poisons Everything

The following is a summarization and commentary by me on the book "The Science of Fear" by Daniel Gardner. I'd love to hear your comments on the topic.

Mankind now lives in a society where the number of ways to meet ones end are more numerous than they have ever been before. Whether it's the toxins in our diet, illicit drugs, terrorism, malfunction in transportation, pollution, obesity, disease, war, famine, nuclear radiation, failure of gravity, bad karma, large predators, riding with Ted Kennedy, falling out of a roller coaster, the failure of gravity, asteroids, cancer, sleep apnea, choking on a McNugget, being Jewish, voting for a Democrat, voting for a Republican, listening to Michelle Bachmann speak, gangrene, spontaneous combustion, riots, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, reality TV, zombies, crack, anthrax, Saddam Hussein, sleeping with a woman of disreputable character, sleeping with a man, gun violence, Viagra overdose, alcohol, Tourettes Syndrome, serial killers, or even being smited by one of three thousand deities; YOU ARE IN DANGER!

Or are you?

The average lifespan of a human being has on averaged increased steadily over time. Even though we find ourselves in the midst of more and more ways to die expectedly or unexpectedly, we find ourselves living longer than we ever have before. This is especially true in western civilized nations. The things that we fear are legitimate. The probability of meeting your end in many of these situations is minute.

Thanks to the advances in medicine, we live longer than we have before even in spite of the increased dangers we face. Of chief concern to many western people is infectious disease, cancer, toxins, and terrorism. While these issues do have a legitimate capacity to kill, the irrationality of fear has poisoned society.

Infectious disease is a legitimate threat to your health. Every surface in your environment is coated with organisms that in the right conditions will decimate your body and destroy you from the inside. Ebola virus, AIDS, SARS, the West Nile fever, bird flu, and swine flu have caused a cultural shock. In reality, all of these represent little statistical threat to kill you. The common influenza virus is much more likely to kill you and it never generates the type of hysteria that these diseases do.

The number of cancer cases has increased per capita steadily. Is it because of air pollution, water pollution, pesticides, or bad karma? Again, the answer is no. The simply fact is that if a person lives longer, they are more likely to get cancer. If I told you that in 20 years the lifetime rate of cancer would reach 100% you might be terrified. If I also told you that in 20 years, the average lifetime span would be 100 years, this would be a cause for celebration. When compensated for the rate of smokers and the longer average lifespan, the cancer rate has not really increased at all even in spite of the increased toxicity of our environment.

What about toxins? Many would point out that toxins are present in our drinking water, in our food, in our air, nearly everywhere and everything we encounter now is polluted with toxins. This is simply a misnomer. There is no such thing as a "toxin". Every substance known to man is a "toxin". What differentiates them is the amount that enters your body. Radioactive Uranium is a substance that is persistent throughout our environment. It is a natural substance that was formed during the creation of our galaxy. Your body right now has trillions of atoms of it unleashing radiation upon you. If CNN were to publish this information, mass hysteria might ensue due to the perceived "toxicity" and the large number. In reality, this number is minute compared with the number of atoms in your body and the amount of radiation to which your cells are subjected in negligible. Drink enough distilled water and your blood cells will explode. Eat enough table salt and your cells will implode.

What about terrorism? While the lives lost are emotionally tragic and the murder of unsuspecting civilians should be loathesome, your chances of dying of a terrorist attack are far lower than your chance of dying of influenza. After the 9/11 attacks, people were so afraid of flying (chance of death negligible) that they started driving to destinations in situations they would normally take an airline. The result: More people on the roads, more death. The chance of dying in an automobile accident in your lifetime is 1 in 75. Considering how long this fear of flying persisted, the fear of terrorist acts like 9/11 and the subsequent switch to automobile travel killed more people than the actual terrorist attacks.

While every single risk mentioned above is a legitimate risk, the amount of fear spread by biased media, rumor, politics and advertising is completely unjustified. This is not to say that society should forego developing risk aversion strategies. Society should look to use resources wisely in risk aversion, rather than rely on biased sources and the resulting hysteria.

So what are your thoughts on the inherent risks of life and the fear that we place in them? Which risks are justifiably worrisome and which aren't?

Replies to This Discussion

For me it comes down to this: Why live in fear? What's the point. One of the main reasons I came in reason, non-belief, atheism, free-thought etc...was because I choose not to live in fear.

Now there are things I cannot avoid like when it comes to the health and well-being of my own children and my own mortality and how it relates to them. Fear seems to creep in despite my attempts otherwise.

I find how the media, both the left and right, exploit fear is disturbing and disgusting. I've noticed how many headlines are begin with "Did Know That (fill in the blank with pretty much anything) Could Kill You".

Yes we could all die from disease or war or a nuke or the coming of whomever or a car wreck or drugs or the plague or a random brain hemorrhage but how does focusing on that which I have no control over improve my life and the lives of those I care about?

On 9/11 19 mainly Saudis hijack 4 planes and the rest is history. We, the US goes to war in Afghanistan and then off to Iraq. Only fear or greed can justify the war in Iraq, out of our fear 100,000s of Iraqis have died, mainly civilians. We dumped tons of DU rounds that will kill civilians for years to come. We are being protected from Islamic devils, who is protecting the people of Iraq from us? Fear is useful if you want to poison rational thought.

I don't think that the removal of Saddam Hussein was unjustified. The occupation was unnecessary, but the man did use chemical weapons on his own people. They should have taken him out in 1991. Instead, it has dragged on far too long while the US tries to establish a puppet government. They should have just fired a cruise missile up his ass. The same goes for Qaddafi. A message needs to be sent: keep your house in order or you'll be removed from power and from life,

Saddam was the justification the US used to invade and occupy Iraq but the chemical weapons came from the US. Interesting how you can set up the situation where the weapon is supplied, the dirty deed is performed and then we decide years later that Saddam has to be removed. To bad for the Kurds that died we didn't feel the same when deed was being performed. Just sayn' interesting.

Taht is one of my fav books. (taking it off the shelf now) Here it is called RISK The Science and Politics of Fear.

I would highly recommend it. Gardner's thesis seems to be the following: Why go around needlessly worrying about every risk there is. One may as well not leave the house because almost everything is a risk when you think about it.

He maintains that we live in the safest and healthiest age ever yet we are bomarded by the media with horror stories. He goes on to show how in some countries when crime figures drop, the actual coverage of crime in the media increases thus giving the illusion that it has really increased. He argues convincingly that in some media circles there is a morbid fascination with bad news.

There is an emphasis on critiical thinking running throughout the book which I like; in that we should have the tools to wade through the minefield of true and false claims.

To sum it up: fear is ok but unreasonable fear is not.

And finally, a nice qoute from the book: 'Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. - Samuel Johnson

How does that old saying go (in short) -- change what you you can and forget the rest? There is much Psychological research strongly suggesting the value of this.

"When people use the self-regulatory strategy of mental contrasting (Oettingen, 1999), they first imagine a desired future (e.g., improving in academic or professional performance) and then reflect on the respective negative reality (e.g., having little time or being distracted). The conjoint elaboration of the positive future and the negative reality makes future and reality simultaneously accessible (Kawada, 2004) and activates the relational construct (Higgins & Chaires, 1980) of the negative reality standing in the way of realizing the desired future, thereby emphasizing a necessity to change the present reality to achieve the desired future. This necessity to act should activate relevant expectations of success, which then informs goal commitment." THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOALS Part 2

The Science of Fear was a good book but the Author avoided bringing up religion period. I lent the book to someone who would benefit immensely from it since they tend to be overly fearful in a very unrealistic way. IDK I never got the book back, perhaps she was too scared to read it. Or maybe enjoys living in fear....